Cocktail party - 22nd NovOliver & Zoe's birthday party - 6th Dec (It'll be during the day but I suspect we will all need alcohol that afternoon/evening)Yule Feast -13th Dec (Mouse and Tops have any more details beyond the date?)

Do we have a date for Chrissie Pissie yet? 20th? (have edited it)

Oh and anyone want to take responsibility for Turkey day this year? Megzz and Snerg are unable and we have no room for it if it rains...

I was at the local supermarket on Saturday night (I know, social butterfly me) waiting at the deli to buy 1/2 a chook for dinner. At this particular deli, it is usual to wait in front of the chook display if that's all you want. Then, the deli person can ask you what size chook, print out the label, bag the chook and you are done. Nothing strange about that.

So I'm waiting and the young bloke behind the counter, lets call him Snotty Little Shit (SLS) is serving someone else. So I'm watching the other person in the deli cleaning up the fish display and remembering back to the days when I used to work in a deli. I was wondering if they had a good boss, who allows you to start packing stuff up when it gets quiet about an hour before close, or a bad boss who won't let you touch anything but still expects everything to be clean and in the coolroom by 8.05pm. It was a quiet night, so I had no concerns about waiting to be served while the person cleaning got on with it.

So I'm still waiting and then I notice that SLS and the bloke he is serving looking at me. Then they confer briefly, then bloke being served (BBS) looks at his list, SLS gets something else, wraps it and hands it over, they both look at me, confer, BBS consults his list, etc etc. This happens about 5 times. By this stage I'm getting annoyed because I want to get home and get dinner started but I wait patiently. Finally after one last glance and conference, BBS moves off and I wait for SLS to come and get my chook for me. And I wait. Then I walk down the counter and he is putting something in the display. Hello? Do you serve customers you wanker, I didn't say.

"What do you want" SLS says, rudely. I almost, and should have, said Customer Service. But I was polite. "1/2 chicken please". I watch him print out the label, "No, one of the $4.99 ones thanks, with sundried tomato and basil".

SLS: We don't have anyMe: Yes you do (I've just wasted 10 fucking minutes of my life looking at them)SLS: No that was an old specialMe: They are right here in the display, right behind the ticket that says $4.99 (voice rising) Would you like to come and have a look?SLS: (sullenly) Oh I forgot they were there.Me: (In my head, yeah right you %*&%^%#$@$)

Fruit and veg person: SLS (didn't hear his name) mark down all those ones to $2.50SLS: Yeah, okay I'll do that.

So, not only did SLS have to serve me, he got told to give me a discount. When I saw BBS later on my rounds of the supermarket I gave him the glaring of his life until he looked away embarrassed. Bastard.

Moral of the story: if you don't like serving customers don't work in customer service. I'm considering having a t-shirt made up with this, just in case I ever run into him again.

Um, Pip? You should join the facebook group for breathless appreciators of this guy. You and Corinne can gush over him.

...Hey, at least it's not Darcy anymore.

Pip and her friend Janet watched "Penelope" a kids movie where Christina Ricci has to accept herself even though she has a pig's snout for a nose.McAvoy is the love interest.This movie has the hottest kiss I've ever seen in a PG movie.No wonder teenage pregnancy is a problem!

Unfortunately for those of us hoping that the destruction of the Universe, when the LHC is/was(?) turned on today, would mean that we wouldn't have to clean the oven, we are out of luck. Despite the doomsayers claiming that we are all going to be sucked into a man-made black hole, and wouldn't that be ironic, apparently larger collisions occur in space all the time. Bugger. So looks like I'll have to keep putting off cleaning the oven. Unless of course they find that the mysterious God-particle really gets the grime off. That would be good.

From these 36,000+ who have completed the above have enabled the study leader to say:"People often define their sense of identity through their musical taste, wearing particular clothes, going to certain pubs, and using certain types of slang. It's not so surprising that personality should also be related to musical preference."WOW! Hmm, people often display the fact that they have an identity. Who would have thought? Really? What an astounding statement.

In the survey: "More than 36,000 people from all over the world were asked to rate 104 musical styles and also questioned about aspects of their personality." Prof North said the research could have many uses in marketing, adding: "If you know a person's music preference you can tell what kind of person they are, who to sell to."

And here at the results:(Astute readers will notice some glaringly obvious styles of music, but that might be a sub-editor on the article.)

MUSICAL STYLES VERSUS PERSONALITY TRAITS

BLUES High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

JAZZ High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease

CLASSICAL MUSIC High self-esteem, creative, introvert and at ease

RAP High self-esteem, outgoing

OPERA High self-esteem, creative, gentle

COUNTRY AND WESTERN Hardworking, outgoing

REGGAE High self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease

CHART POP High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle, not at ease

SOUL High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease

What a complete waste of time. Also, a crock.Check out the questions on the survey! You are asked to remember how you felt about a myriad things in the year in which you discovered your FIRST 'important' album including your relationship with your parents, whether you felt you were heading for something 'big', how it related to your love life, career/career direction etc etc

For me it was 1992, Nirvana's 'Nevermind' and the answer to most questions is 'I don't know? 5 on a scale of 1-10.' ie useless, flawed data.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

In preparation for the KoL BBQ next year, we had to experiment with the pizza. And we shared this unique experience with Meg and Snerg.

Here it is before cooking...and after cooking...Note - the white chocolate didn't melt. It just went a bit brown. Of course, topsy didn't realise that you could buy white chocolate chips from the baking section in the super market so he just bought a normal block of white chocolate and chopped it up.

And here's proof that we ate it.

It mostly didn't taste too bad. The chunks of white chocolate overpowered any flavour of tomato or oregano. Mostly. Now and then there was a weird void where the other two flavours rose up in revolt. And I do mean revolt. I struggled to finish the second piece....

And the bad news is.... Now that I look at the kolwiki again, it seems we need to use real slices of tomato and not just the passata.

So there has to be an experiment number 2 with proper white chocolate chips and real slices of tomato.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Just a quick note for any of you still homebrewing. I lost yet another one of my little black books full of beer recipes (makes about 4 now I think) and even following the learning curve of your average American president named Bush it seemed time for a new tack; I'm putting the recipes for my current batch of brews up on the blog I threw together for fiddling with bowmaking. (Yeah, I know. But what goes together better than archery and beer?)